2016 JESC Reviews – Israel – Shir and Tim – Follow My Heart
Israel are back for their second Junior Eurovision, with their debut back in 2012, represented by Kids.il and the song Let The Music Win. This year, Israel will be represented by the duo of Shir and Tim with the song Follow My Heart. Could it be second time lucky for Israel in Junior Eurovision?
The song begins beautifully, with Hebrew lyrics sung by Tim backed by a strong beat – the type that usually lead into a building ballad type ending. As the orchestral sounds grow in the chorus, so does my frustration that English is used in this song. Some songs work well with English choruses, or phrases here and there in English, but for me, this song loses its beauty in the English choruses. In general, I find that the choruses lack so much emotion, even in comparison with that first verse.
Their voices are both nice, however I find that their harmonies are quite flat and both don’t really reach that point in the song to really blow away the audience. The song, and video accompanying it ends up feeling like a bit of a high school musical track, slightly outdated, and just a bit too choreographed. I’m not too sure how they will approach the staging of this, but I think it’s going to have to be something absolutely mind blowing to push this song up higher than what Kids.il reached (8th place, just for reference).
If this song was cut off after the first verse, I would have given it an 8+/10 rating, however after that point, for me, it just falls too flat, and it’s such a shame as I think it had a lot of potential. Saying that, it’s still not my least favourite song of the JESC 2016 group, if that’s any consolation.
